Bees Have Heart!
Greetings Parents and Community Members,
It was exciting to see our MC students returning on the 100th day of school and our Kindergartners celebrating it just the same! Transitions to virtual learning have been going smoothly and we are continuing to promote our mitigation strategies in everything we do. Please remember that if your child has been impacted by COVID-19 by either testing positive or being a primary contact to someone who has, it is imperative that you keep them home and notify myself and our nurses for next steps. Also, it goes without saying, any students exhibiting symptoms should remain home for at least 24 hours until symptom free. I’m re-attaching our schoolwide Essential Agreements below. These are community pledges that we can all live by! Remember our nurses can be reached at lori.oxman@atlanta.k12.ga.us and brandy.ford@atlanta.k12.ga.us.
With face to face learning now back at both campuses, as promised, we are continuing to improve our processes and procedures, starting with carpool! With both buildings back, it’s a great time to roll out our new carpool app PikMyKid. PikMyKid will allow you to declare when you are here for carpool, change transportation, send updates about critical bus changes and even contact your teacher all through the PikMyKid app. Very important details will be coming home tomorrow including student specific information on how to register, download the app and your new carpool number. We are also working on a process to get this information to our virtual learning families as well. We will start using the PikMyKid app on Tuesday, February 16 for dismissal. Don’t worry though, a Brandon staff member will always be in the carpool lane should you need assistance. Be sure to read through everything and register!
Staying on the subject of carpool, I want to remind everyone that this Friday will be the last day with our extended drop off time of 8:15am. Beginning Tuesday (along with the launch of our new carpool app PikMyKid), all students arriving after 8am will be marked tardy. In order to make this happen, it’s critical that our students (mostly PC) are fully ready, mask on, and everything in hand when your car pulls around. We want all parents to stay in their cars, drop off and be on your way quickly! As we begin to lessen our dismissal time with the help of our new app, we will also begin to move closer to our normal dismissal time of 2:15pm. Until then, we will continue to start 10 minutes earlier at 2:05 to ensure we can get every student out of the building and on their way home by 3:00pm. Need to ride a shuttle bus to the other building? Both bus 560 and 574 will bring students from one campus to the other each morning and afternoon.
As we move deeper into the new year, we are excited that gifted testing will begin ramping up for all of our 1st and 2nd look students, over 300 in total! Led by gifted lead Sonya Walston (swalston@atlanta.k12.ga.us), students that have been referred for testing either by their teachers or parents will begin the battery of assessments beginning March 1. Please review THIS letter from APS Gifted Coordinator Dr. Quail Arnold to get a glimpse of what gifted testing will look like at Brandon and within APS. Also, be sure to reach out to Sonya Walston with any questions.
Lastly, we have had a GREAT turnout for our first two weeks of surveillance testing at PC, testing over 180 students and staff today alone. We will begin at the Main Campus on Tuesday, February 16, so if you would like to consent your child to surveillance testing, please be sure to turn in the permission forms sent home this week to your homeroom teacher. We’ve also posted them HERE.
Oh yeah! Be sure to order DoorDash this weekend! Celebrate Valentine’s Day by taking the night off from cooking. From Friday to Sunday of this weekend, enter code MBES21 on all orders over $20 and DoorDash will donate 20% of all sales back to Brandon, benefiting our amazing teachers, staff and students!
That’s all (for now)
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